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Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets, introduced himself to this soccer-mad city on Friday with a story.

“A few years ago I had a girlfriend, and she really — she hated sport,” Prokhorov, the 6-foot-8 bachelor, was saying. “She asked me why basketball is better than (soccer) . . . My reply is, ‘Look, I think basketball is better than (soccer) because my team for sure will have some scores during the match.’ ”

Such was the tone of both the off-court discourse and the on-court back and forth at the O2 Arena on Friday night. Yes, those were two rosters of alleged professionals playing the first regular-season NBA game in Europe. Yes, that was an ex-Raptor named Kris Humphries dominating the discourse with 18 points and 17 rebounds for the Nets, who handed Hump’s former squad a 116-103 defeat. And yes, a late-season showdown between the Nets and Raptors, two teams who came into the evening with 17 wins apiece, would have been a much harder sell in many NBA-savvy markets — like, say, New Jersey or Toronto — especially considering the same two teams are playing here again Saturday night.

But on a night that began with Adam Silver, the NBA deputy commissioner, repeating the league’s recently established line — that a Europe-based NBA division is “possible,” and that these games in England will go some distance toward either bolstering or damaging that premise — the league had to have liked what it saw.

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What it saw was a capacity crowd of 18,689 at the O2 that seemed genuinely enthusiastic about watching a couple of NBA teams that aren’t quite ready for many marquees. And if the pre-game circus barking from the guys in the suits was a little over the top — there was talk of the Raptors and Nets as “emerging powers” playing “meaningful games” — at least Raptors chairman Larry Tanenbaum had the sense to throw in some self-deprecation.

“My friend Mr. Prokhorov and ourselves, we share the same record,” Tanenbaum said before the game with an appropriate chuckle, looking across the stage at the Russian oligarch. “And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Tanenbaum, as much as he made light of his team’s struggles, later offered his first public endorsement of Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo, whose contract is up after the season. “Bryan has a plan and we back his plan as a board,” Tanenbaum said. Colangelo, for his part, said he has yet to come to an agreement on an extension and declined further comment.

The vibe was reminiscent of a circa-1995 Raptor game — complete with a PA announcer explaining to the crowd the concept of free throws, and a rabble that seemed unusually excited at every swish from the charity stripe — but the setting was unabashedly American. European expansion was once a no-go because these shores didn’t have the U.S.-style arenas to fit the NBA’s revenue model. But that’s changing. The O2, opened in 2007, looks like a smaller-scale version of the Staples Center — it was built by AEG, the folks who constructed L.A.’s sporting palace and own a chunk of the Lakers — and the place has everything from corporate suites to multiple Starbucks. I’ve felt more like I was in England at a TFC game.

Berlin and Hamburg have comparable facilities. There’s talk of renovating an existing arena in Paris to bring it up to NBA standards.

“We clearly have an economic model that can work for the league long-term,” said Tim Leiweke, the AEG CEO, “but we’re going to need six or eight of these (arenas) in the right markets, and we’re working on that.”

It’s not just about the buildings, of course. There are a zillion other hurdles that’ll need to be cleared if the NBA wants permanent roots here. There are plugged-in basketball types familiar with the European game that will tell you that, while the masses here might embrace the NBA as an annual curiosity, they’re a sporting populace that lives for the age-old rivalries of heritage clubs, and not easily sold on the concept of franchises that appear from thin air.

Still, as silly as it sounded, there seemed to be something wise about Prokhorov’s punchline. The king of this market, Premiership soccer, isn’t packaged anything like the NBA, a never-ending assault on the senses complete with fuzzy mascots and buxom dancers and one bucket after another. For one night, at least, an arena full of customers seemed to appreciate the pace and the noise and the scores of the NBA product. Whether they were giddy from seeing it all for the first time, or falling in love at first sight, is something only time will tell.

“(European expansion) is not right around the corner,” said Silver. “We hope to see it in a decade from now . . . To actually create a division that competes on a regular schedule with NBA teams in the U.S. is something where there’s an enormous number of unknowns, and we’re going to continue to study it . . . (But) we think if any league can do it, we can do it.”

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